EDITOR'S NOTE

Who Gives A Fuck About An Oxford Comma?
by Justin Johnson

One of my favorite albums is Vampire Weekend's self-titled debut. Track two is an amazing song called "Oxford Comma," and the first line is, Who gives a fuck about an Oxford comma? The song's a bit hard to follow, and really, the only part about the comma is the hook. But it's one of the most memorable hooks I've ever heard.

Onto the point: Who does give a fuck about an Oxford comma? The Oxford comma is a punctuation mark for list-makers, capping a list just before the and and final entry. Some use it, some don't. It doesn't really matter who uses it, or if you do. The fact that it even exists is what matters. The Oxford Comma is what matters; not its users.

We have a world full of punctuation, and we're slowly abandoning it. It's becoming widespread; it's not just the Internet that is forgetting about what punctuation is (and let's be honest, the Internet is to blame here). Oxford commas are just one of the many, many marks that are slipping away, tossed aside as marginal.

The frequent misuse of your and you're is probably the most troubling, followed closely by the abuse of apostrophes in it's and its. As a society, we've reached a level of complacency with the destruction of the system of the English language, so much to the point that we rarely correct an error when someone misuses a mark. In the same vein, points of ellipses are becoming abused and stretched so much that when they're used properly, they no longer have their original effect. I know that I for one am guilty of not using question marks when I ask a question on AIM. I'm working on that.

There is no real way to fix this problem beyond everyone taking the time to look at what they're writing. We've even reached the point that we're typing what we're thinking, but our hands can't keep up. This results in the elimination of entire words. We've become a society obsessed with convenience and speed, and are neglecting the smaller, important parts of our lives. By neglecting what we've been taught, we're confirming the belief that we are lazy and unfocused. We're smarter than this. We evolved into what we are for a reason. Forgetting what we've learned is simply stepping backwards. The next thing we know we'll be grunting and clapping our hands because of fire.